JERUSALEM: Appealing to Israel's younger generation, US President Barack Obama urged them to look at the world through Palestinian eyes and push their political leaders to take a risk and make peace with their neighbours.

In the carefully crafted and well-received keynote address during his three-day trip to Israel and Palestine, Mr Obama repeatedly described the deep alliance between the two countries and his support for the Israel's right to security.

President Barack Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres raise their glasses in a toast after Obama received the Israeli Medal of Distinction. Photo: AP

He spoke at length about the generations-long journey of the Jewish people to Israel that involved “centuries of suffering and exile, prejudice, pogroms and even genocide”.

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But he also gently confronted his audience - mostly liberal Israeli students - with the harsh reality of Palestinian life under Israel's military occupation.

“The Palestinian people's right to self-determination and justice must also be recognised. Put yourself in their shoes – look at the world through their eyes.

“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day.

“It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished. It is not right to prevent Palestinians from farming their lands; to restrict a student's ability to move around the West Bank; or to displace Palestinian families from their home.”

To sustained and loud applause, he continued: “Neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer. Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people in their own land."

And after an earlier hesitant answer to a question over Israel's continued settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, raised at a media conference following his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, he criticised settlements.

"Israelis must recognise that continued settlement activity is counterproductive to the cause of peace, and that an independent Palestine must be viable – that real borders will have to be drawn.

"Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see."

Earlier in the day, after his two-hour meeting with President Abbas, he urged Palestinians and Israelis to put aside any pre-conditions on the resumption of peace talks, effectively dismissing the Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze before the peace process can resume.

Mr Obama spoke about children – both Palestinian and Israeli – several times during his visit, looking at their experience in the context of his own two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

“I think about children like Osher Twito, who I met in Sderot – children, the same age as my own daughters, who went to bed at night fearful that a rocket would land in their bedroom simply because of who they are and where they live.

“That's why we have made it clear, time and again, that Israel cannot accept rocket attacks from Gaza … and that's why Israel has a right to expect Hamas to renounce violence and recognise Israel's right to exist.”

Announcing he was going “off script” the US President described his meeting on Thursday with a group of young Palestinians who “weren't that different from my daughters, they weren't that different from your daughters or sons”.

To whistles and applause he said: “I honestly believe if any Israeli parent sat down with those kids they would say I want these kids to succeed, I want them to have opportunities just like my kids do.”

In the context of a rapidly evolving Arab world, in which dictators had been overthrown by popular uprisings, Israel could no longer seek peace with autocratic governments, Mr Obama said, noting that Arab states must also change.

“The days when they could condemn Israel to distract their people from a lack of opportunity are over. Now is the time for the Arab world to take steps toward normalised relations with Israel.”

Commentators in Israel widely praised the speech, which was conceived primarily to do one thing: win over the people of Israel so that they would pressure their leaders to work towards a “lasting peace” with the Palestinians.

“It was a deft, brilliantly conceived speech. He told Israelis how moral they are, how admirably creative they are, how smart with those 10 Nobel prizes, how democratic, how prosperous, and how mighty – the most powerful country in the region,” wrote David Horovitz in the Times of Israel.

“And having built them up, convinced them of their near-invincibility, he showed them a theoretical future that he insisted could be realised if they would only trust in their strength sufficiently to take risks for peace.”

In the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, Bradley Burston wrote: “Four years from now, when he hands back the White House, Barack Obama should consider a change of direction, even a change of venue. Let him run here. It's about time we knew again what a real leader was like.”

Not everyone was won over. US journalist for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg tweeted from the Jerusalem International Convention Centre: “Head of the settler's council is sitting behind me at Obama's speech and looks as if his head is going to explode.”